11 months...just plain crazy?

If I were my mom (which in this case I'm glad I'm not), right now, I would have two children under the age of one year, two children who were not twins but who were born 11 months apart. My parents, for some reason they have never revealed, delivered another child 11 months after the first one. This means that when the first child was 9 weeks old (if I'm doing my math right), the second one was conceived. (Well, the second one was actually conceived when the first child was 11 weeks old. You know how they count!) Still, 9 weeks! Can you imagine? I can just picture this conversation:

Person: "How old is your child?"
Mom: "She's 3 months old."
Person: "Ahh. How precious."
Mom: "And, I'm pregnant with my second one."
Person: "Really? Did you all plan this?" (That's the same question I have asked on multiple occasions.)
I can picture my mom answering, "No, we didn't plan this. What do you think we are? Stupid?"

No, Mom, you aren't stupid. Even if it was an accident, the baby is no accident. Babies are never an accident, no matter what the adults think.

If you hadn't figured it out already, I am Child #2, born 11 months and 2 weeks after my sister Kim. I started thinking about this situation recently because three days ago Elizabeth turned the age that Kim was when I was born. Wow! I CANNOT imagine having another child yet. For that matter, I can't even imagine being pregnant again! Mom and Dad, what were you thinking?!! OK, you probably weren't thinking that you would get pregnant again so soon after the first. Did you cry when you found out? I think I would have and am perfectly fine if you did the same thing (even though I was the baby in the womb). How long did it take you to get adjusted to the thought of having another one so soon after your firstborn arrived? I'm sure you became excited about it, but wow. How could you NOT be so overwhelmed at first? You didn't have much time to think about it, so maybe it seemed normal to you. Normal?!! What's normal about that? (That's me on the left in the first pic. I'm on the right in the next 3 pics.)

So, my sister Kim and I are the same age for 17 days. This always threw some people for a loop (and caused a lot of laughter from other people who were glad it didn't happen to them). We used to get asked all the time if we were twins. We didn't look very much alike. I was chubby and she was thin. We both had blond hair, though. Maybe that's what it was.

At times I wondered if I were adopted because of how people reacted when we told them we were eleven months apart. It seemed so odd, so strange, so bizarre to have two children--not twins--under one year of age. That didn't happen, so I deducted that I was adopted. They told me I wasn't.

I would not want to be in my mom's situation, having a 3-day-old baby with sweet Elizabeth running around. However, I am so glad that this "accident," this "mistake," happened to my mom and dad because I wouldn't be here if they had been careful. I'm on the left in the one below.





The Poe kids (Kara, Kellee, Kurt, Kim)

By the way, all four of us are only 6 years apart. That's another thing I cannot imagine.